innovation

Given soundings of a new 2nd generation Kindle on the way, thought you
might get a kick out this short concept prototype ("Kindle Love")
video sketch by a small group of students in my recent "Scenarios &
Simulations" course at Kansas. Credits at end.

I'm a huge sci-fi dork, I'm sure I'm not alone in that here. One of the reasons I enjoy sci-fi is the chance to reevaluate the devices and computer systems thought-up by the great writers and film-makers of the past. It is interesting just how bad many of these interfaces are.

This discussion can be two-fold: What devices and interfaces do you find memorable from sci-fi you've read/seen?

So I'm half watching the TV last night and I look up during a
commercial for Ford automobiles, and they are talking about their new
navigation system and the guy in the commercial (or an actor claiming
to be) says something along the lines of, "I design the user
interface. I like taking hard problems and making them simple for
people to use."

Needless to say, I almost fell out of my chair. Anyone else seen this
commercial?

There is an interesting article on the business week site regarding the US governments initiative to develop a metric for innovation. It will likely bemore of an economic indicator, but may well lay the ground work for corporate and academic metrics as well.

Peter Drucker said the only two investments in a business are markeitng and innovation. Everything else is a cost.

In the short run, I think innovation metrics within an organization will be focused on controlling expense. In the mid run it will be about measuring ROI.

I was selected to be one of the organizer of my company's engineering
off-site this year and one of the themes is "Innovation" - a whole day
is dedicated to it. I am currently the only UEx designer with the
company. The discussions of innovation will revolve around many
topics: technology, process, business and hopefully interaction
design.

"never fail user expectations" is often repeated in the User Experience
fields. Consistency is important, but what about innovation? New ways of
interaction assumes that some or all of the expectations of the user will
fail. If the new interaction may work better than the old one, why not try
it? If indeed this new interaction is better, it is possible only because
the "never fail user expectations" idea was ignored.

Excerpts:
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"How do you generate profitable innovation? Business schools and
executive education programs have been hard at work for decades
churning out numbers-oriented, metric-measuring, linear-focused
executives who are much better at managing costs than managing
imagination.